Plumber pay moves up a three-step ladder — apprentice, journeyman, master — but there is no federal pay figure for each step.
BLS prices plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters together: a median of $30.67 an hour, or $63,800 a year, in May 2025, with the middle half earning between $50,190 and $85,110.
Here is what the plumber pay scale does and doesn't show, and what actually moves pay at each rung.
Plumber pay by level at a glance
Start with the one table that exists.
BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program counted 465,840 wage-and-salary plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters (SOC 47-2152) in May 2025 — data released May 15, 2026.
The trade's median wage was $30.67 an hour, or $63,800 a year; the mean was $34.70 an hour, or $72,170.
The full spread, from the OEWS percentiles:
- 10th percentile: $21.22/hr ($44,150/yr)
- 25th percentile: $24.13/hr ($50,190/yr)
- Median: $30.67/hr ($63,800/yr)
- 75th percentile: $40.92/hr ($85,110/yr)
- 90th percentile: $52.13/hr ($108,420/yr)
Read that as one bucket, not four rungs.
The 465,840 count mixes apprentices, journeymen and masters with pipefitters and steamfitters, and BLS publishes no separate wage for any licence tier, for apprentices, or for residential versus commercial work.
The percentiles tell you how the combined trade is paid — not how each level is paid.
Three measurement notes matter before you compare these figures to an offer.
Annual figures assume a full-time, year-round schedule of 2,080 hours.
OEWS counts employees only, so self-employed owners and partners are excluded.
And the wage figures include commissions and production bonuses but exclude overtime pay, shift differentials and non-production bonuses — base pay as BLS measures it, not total earnings.
For the state-by-state versions of this table, see our national plumber salary data.
Apprentice pay steps
Apprentice pay is built to rise.
Federal rules for registered apprenticeship programs — 29 CFR 29.5(b)(5), administered by the U.S. Department of Labor — require a progressively increasing schedule of wages, consistent with the skill the apprentice acquires, with an entry wage not below the minimum wage prescribed by the Fair Labor Standards Act where it applies.
Each step up the program is a step in pay.
What the federal rule does not do is fix the size of those steps.
There is no federal requirement that an apprentice earn a set percentage of the journeyworker rate.
The percentage ladders you see quoted — an entry percentage rising in steps toward the journeyman rate — are conventions written into each registered program's standards or negotiated in a collective bargaining agreement, not DOL rules.
That is also why no national apprentice wage number belongs on this page.
Our research found no verified UA or PHCC apprentice wage schedule; each local program and its union contract publish their own.
Treat any generic "apprentices start at X percent" figure as unsourced until the program itself confirms it.
One place where percentages are formal is federally funded Davis-Bacon construction.
There, an apprentice may be paid below the posted prevailing rate only if individually registered in a DOL- or state-registered apprenticeship program, and apprentice rates are expressed as percentages of the journeyworker hourly rate, set by the registered program (29 CFR 5.5(a)(4)(i)).
For what the apprenticeship years involve beyond the wage schedule, see our plumbing apprentice guide.
Your wage schedule lives in the program's standards
Journeyman pay
The journeyman tier is the trade's working core: past the apprenticeship, holding the licence tier your state's board defines — the title alone doesn't set your scope.
Our plumber career guide covers the ladder and what states require; this section is about the money.
The honest answer is that BLS publishes no journeyman wage.
Journeymen sit somewhere inside the combined distribution above, alongside apprentices, masters, pipefitters and steamfitters, and no percentile in that table can be attributed to journeymen alone.
What the table does establish is the trade's overall shape: a median of $63,800 a year, with the middle half between $50,190 and $85,110.
The one pay rule that names journeymen directly is the prevailing-wage baseline.
On Davis-Bacon federally funded construction, apprentice rates are set as percentages of the journeyworker hourly rate — the posted journeyworker rate is the scale's baseline on those jobs (29 CFR 5.5(a)(4)(i)).
Our journeyman plumber salary page shows the trade's BLS tables under the journeyman heading — the figures are the combined occupation, so treat them as the trade's scale rather than a journeyman-only wage.
Master plumber pay
Master plumber is the top licence tier in the states that issue one.
What the licence permits, and what experience and exam it requires, is decided by the issuing board — our master plumber guide covers the requirements.
On pay, the same data limit applies, and it applies harder: BLS has no master-plumber wage, and the top of the combined table — $40.92/hr at the 75th percentile, $52.13/hr ($108,420/yr) at the 90th — mixes masters with journeymen, pipefitters, steamfitters and high-cost-metro plumbers.
No verified source supports quoting a specific master premium over journeyman pay, and we won't invent one.
The structural point is about who gets counted.
OEWS covers employees only — self-employed owners and partners in unincorporated firms are excluded.
Master status matters most where a plumber qualifies their own contracting business, and the earnings of those owner-operators sit entirely outside the federal wage table.
The BLS figures understate what a successful master-plumber business can earn, by an amount the data cannot say.
The master plumber salary page presents the trade's BLS tables the same way — the combined occupation's scale, not a master-only wage.
Licence tiers are set by your board
Service vs construction vs commercial pay
Search for "service plumber pay" or "commercial plumber pay" and you'll find numbers presented as if BLS tracks them.
It does not: the federal wage table has no separate figure for residential versus commercial work, or for service versus new construction.
A site quoting averages for those categories is working from job postings or surveys, not federal data — and we won't quote one either.
The defensible federal cut is by industry, and it comes closest to the job-setting question.
May 2025 median wages for the trade by top industry: government employers, excluding education and hospitals, $71,660; manufacturing $65,770; heavy and civil engineering construction $63,270; and plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors $63,010.
At the median, government-side plumbing work pays above contractor work.
Where the jobs actually sit: 340,140 of the trade's wage-and-salary jobs are in building equipment contractors, against 14,960 in utility system construction and 11,480 in local government outside schools and hospitals.
Two honest wrinkles.
The highest-paying industries in federal data are niches, not career ladders: electric power generation, transmission and distribution ($115,310 median), petroleum and coal products manufacturing ($106,550) and pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing ($105,800) — small establishments with few openings.
And one measurement note: OEWS includes commissions and production bonuses but excludes overtime and shift differentials, so plumbers who work overtime can see real annual earnings run above the published figures.
What moves a plumber's pay up fastest
Pull the levers the data actually supports.
First, finish the ladder: the apprenticeship wage schedule rises with skill under the federal rule, and completing the program moves you onto the licensed tiers, where your board — not the program — sets the scope you can sell.
That progression is the one step the federal rulebook names directly.
Second, geography moves the median sharply.
The national median is $63,800; the top-paying metro medians were San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA $107,560; Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN $103,380; Bellingham, WA $102,750; Minneapolis-St.
Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI $101,630; and Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA $101,010.
Note the twist: the biggest job markets are not the top-paying ones.
The New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metros hold the most jobs — 21,040, 15,690 and 12,750 respectively — and only Chicago also makes the pay list.
The states with the most jobs are California (47,660), Texas (44,090), Florida (29,260), New York (23,210) and Illinois (16,750).
Third, the employer: the industry medians above show where the trade's own table pays more, and the niche industries pay more still — if you can get into them.
The floor under all of it is demand.
BLS projects employment of plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters to grow 6.8 percent from 2025 to 2035, from 510.6k to 545.2k jobs (a count that includes the self-employed) — faster than the 3.5 percent all-occupation average — with an average of 42,000 openings per year from growth and replacement.
Career information, not legal or financial advice. Apprentice wage schedules are set by program sponsors and collective bargaining agreements, prevailing-wage rates by the U.S. Department of Labor, and licence requirements by your state board — or your city or county where licensing is local. Confirm the numbers that matter with whoever sets them.